Art, Hiking and Travel in Japan - Tadao Ando - Architecture - Tokyo Station Gallery - Tokyo

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Tadao Ando: Regeneration - Surroundings and Architecture

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2002) in Fort Worth, Texas, designed
by Tadao Ando (Photo courtesy David Woo)

Imagine public housing on the Champs Elysees. Omotesando, the self-proclaimed Tokyo version of that chichi Paris street, has just that. The crusty apartments and overgrown courtyards of Japan's first multi-family concrete housing, Dojunkai Aoyama, were built in 1927 following the Kanto earthquake. In recent years, most apartments have been either abandoned or turned into small shops. Now the landmark structures are being torn down and replaced by a massive complex of shops and housing designed by Tadao Ando.

Ando (b. 1941) is one of Japan's most famous architects, a modernist giant and winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize (architecture's Nobel) who combines sensual materials—velvety smooth cast concrete, warm infusions of natural light, still reflecting pools—with sharp-cornered geometry. A one-time boxer, Ando taught himself architecture, traveled to Europe to see great buildings old and new, and returned to his native Osaka to set up his practice at the age of 27.

Under the theme of regeneration, a new exhibition at Tokyo Station Gallery looks at 10 of Ando's recent designs—both built and unbuilt—through sketches, photos, models, videos, CG fly-throughs and, in some cases, the materials used.

There are a couple of smaller projects, like the cylindrical UNESCO Meditation Space in Paris (1995) and an unbuilt design for a two-story glass shoebox thrust through the top floors of a '20s Art Deco apartment building in Manhattan (1996). But most of the buildings here are large, public-oriented facilities, primarily museums and housing.

For more than ten years, the Benesse Corporation has been transforming an island in the Seto Inland Sea into a nexus of architecture, contemporary art and nature. Ando designed the concrete spaces of the centerpiece Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum (1988-92), sunk deep in forested, seaside hills, and also a windowless, dark wood "art house" (2000-02) in town. An angular stump of a model shows the newest museum space, now under construction. Narrow concrete rectangles and a broad triangle—openings to the underground galleries—project above the coastal promontory like castle ruins. [Ed. update: the Chichu Art Museum opened in 2004.]

Architectural plans of the Dojunkai
Aoyama Apartments Omotesando
Regeneration Project, completed as
Omotesando Hills in 2006 (Image
courtesy Tokyo Station Gallery)

Ando's first major project in the US, the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (1997-2002), echoes Louis Kahn's landmark Kimbell Art Museum across the street in its use of simple materials and natural light. Five long, parallel pavilions—concrete boxes nesting inside individual glass and steel shrouds—project into a shallow pond surrounded by grass.

The catalog essays characterize Ando as sensitive to the local history and environment in which he builds. This is a favorite architectural platitude that sometimes fits Ando, as in Fort Worth, but usually only in an abstract sense. With most projects here, it's a stretch.

Take the Omotesando Regeneration Project. Dojunkai Aoyama integrated homes (and later, shops), gardens and streets in an open, meandering, organically evolving environment. Ando's replacement is, like his museums, introverted. With a blocks-long concrete-and-glass facade pushed flush against the sidewalk, the shopping street becomes a sluice. One breach in the high wall leads to a fish ladder inside—a spiraling walkway lined with shops, a Guggenheim shopping mall.

Regardless of Ando's few shortcomings, this show gives a good overview of the architect's work of the last decade through excellent, easy-to-understand displays and bilingual panels. For a first-hand preview of Ando's work, visit local buildings like Collezione in Omotesando (1986) or the International Library of Children's Literature in Ueno Park (1996-2002), also featured in this exhibition.

This exhibition was held Mar-Apr 2003 at Tokyo Station Gallery in Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan.